March 18, 2007

I’m on a plane home, eight hour flight. I finally stopped crying, but I can still feel her now. I close my eyes and remember our goodbye. We’re in London, Paddington Station, standing next to the train I have to get on in just a few moments. Her hands are on my face. Her eyes, filled with tears, are looking into mine.

“I love you,” she says.

“I love you, too, and I miss you already.”

I couldn’t say anymore as a flood of tears choked back any sound. I felt my whole body, wracked with the pain of leaving her, tense up as I braced myself to step away. I held her tightly to me, kissed her deeply and passionately and told her what was on my heart.

“Nothing is going to keep us apart for long, not even that big ocean. I’ll be back. I promise. I love you. You know that.”

I gave her one last kiss. That was it. I had to leave. I turned and walked away not looking back until I was on the train. She was already walking away not looking back, either. It was too painful.

It took me so many years to admit to myself that I had an interest in women. I never questioned my sexuality. I liked men. I knew that, but there was always something else. I didn’t know what it was. There was a nagging thought in the back of my mind that I couldn’t get a handle on. I remember looking at other girls when I was younger. I remember thinking how pretty some of them were. I think I looked at their bodies in the locker room a little differently than the other girls did. It wasn’t exactly sexual but it was something different. I remember always being embarrassed then, looking away. The feeling wasn’t strong enough for me to think more deeply. It was only a passing thought.

One time in high school I was in a play. I had made a friend there, a female friend. She was very cute, modeled some, drove a VW beetle, the old kind. We were sophomores, fifteen years old. There was something about her. I remember thinking she might be lesbian. I was never really sure. One night backstage she came up to me.

“I need to talk to you.”

So we found a very dark, quiet place and sat down. It was not a good time. We had to go on in a few minutes. She hesitated.

“What is it?”

She seemed nervous and not able to get the words out that she wanted to say. We heard our cue. It was time to go onstage. She never told me what was on her mind. I always had a feeling she was going to tell me she liked me, not as just a friend but as maybe a girlfriend. I never found out.

Now, some 20 years later, I revisit those thoughts and they hold a new meaning for me. I wish I had been brave enough back then to ask her later what she wanted to say. I was nervous, too. I was afraid, yet I knew and wanted her to say it. Maybe I would have known I was bisexual way back then. Maybe my life would have been different. Maybe I would have found real love with a woman instead of the constant heartache with men.

I’m sitting next to my husband on the plane. This will be our last vacation together. It’s not about her. She’s married, too. We can’t be a couple. Still, I know I feel more for her than I do for the man sitting next to me.

Once she called me her overseas lesbian wife. I laughed and loved it!

I miss her…

Just me…Marissa

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